Adding Forum Pages to A Site

[Jeff Sundin]

While working with a customer using a Hostway hosting plan, I discovered that they offer a forum in their "free interactives" section. I mentioned that it might be fun to add that to a "field reports page", so we tried to set one up.

Long story short, I can't get the forum to load and I've spent hours with Hostway on the phone looking for help, but they haven't been able to get it working either. Now the customer has become convinced that he really wants this forum and I'm looking for a better way to add one to his site.

Any help would be greatly appreciated.

[DaveSawers]

Use phpBB instead. As long as you have access to a MySQL database on the server, you just upload the files to your web site area, run the initialization and you're done.

[TimuM]

Do you need a free one.. ?

I always suggest to get vbulletin (paid one).. You never know how big your site will be.. Better to start with something dependable which can handle high traffic forum sites...

[circusplexus]

Are vbulletin's spam prevention tools better than phpbb's? That would be worth the cost in itself.

In general, most small businesses don't have time for a forum anyway. They take managing, and unless you already have a thriving community eager to interact, it will take time to cultivate. Nothing looks worse than an empty forum.

So, something like phpbb might still be fine as an experiment. If the forum thrives you can always upgrade to vbulletin as it has an import function.

[imvain2]

I agree with Circus. We tried implementing our own local community based forum. We already had a huge local online presence so we thought we could get people to start posting in the forum. WRONG.

People want to interact with other posters, so if they see a community of members posting they will join. However, without that community its very difficult to start.

When you see some large forums (like WPW), they were usually started when there wasn't that many forums for the same "theme".

[dean]

I don't believe the paid forums like vbulletin or simple machines are any better or more reliable than open source forums like phpbb or punbb. Any traffic problems down the road will be more likely related to hosting than the forum scripts themselves.
Often when hosting companies offer free scripts, they are simply open source scripts that you can get anyway. I would recommend getting and installing a forum yourself without using a hosting companys' installer so you're getting the most up to date, stable version.
I'm not familiar with Hostway, but a lot of hosts prevent scripts from creating databases, so you go to the hosting control panel, then phpmyadministration and create your database. You don't need to create any db tables or anything else, just the database itself. Once created, you'll have the necessary info for the database, (host name, database name, mysql user name and password). Sometimes you have to append a port number to the database host name. Your host should help you with this.
Upload all the necessary files for whichever forum you chose. Some might require you to edit a configuration file first with the above mentioned info.
Once done, point your browser to the install file and follow the prompts, fill out the form, whatever.
Once done, delete the install file from the server and you should be good to go.

[TimuM]

I personally think vbulletin is much better than open source forums..... btw SMF is not a paid forum, but a good one..... simplemachines.org/download/

[jawn_tech]

Originally Posted by TimuM

btw SMF is not a paid forum, but a good one.....

I was beginning to wonder if there was some big change and I was going to get a bill... But I agree, Simple Machines (aka SMF) is both free, and well, simple. I'm in the process of setting an SMF forum up myself for a customer community with one business I administrate.

But as you can see here in this thread, it's by far not the only option and it's a matter of which works the best with the hosting plan you have, and which comes easiest to you.

[dean]

It's been a while since I've looked at various forum packages, but you're right, SMF is free. The license is slightly more restrictive than some other forums, but it's an excellent forum package.
The point was that the free forums are not less reliable or less able to handle traffic than the paid forums. Of course, anyone is entitled to their opinion so far as which is better or not in terms of features or ease of use.

[Highway of Life]

Originally Posted by circusplexus

Are vbulletin's spam prevention tools better than phpbb's? That would be worth the cost in itself.

vB's spam prevention tools are better than the old phpBB2 version, but not better than phpBB version 3 -- released, December, 2007.

SMF is for sure a better solution than phpBB2, if you want a paid option, vB is a better way to go than IPB, though you should weigh your options.
phpBB3 competes well with vB and IPB, except that it’s a free solution, and license is completely GPL, unlike SMF.

However, that said. I found phpBB3 the easiest to create and integrate a full site around, where phpBB3 handles the users and sessions for the site.
Plus, the phpBB3 templating system is the most powerful of any free solution that is currently available.